As methods for distributing an application program for use on a computer such as a personal computer, a method using a communications network and a method using a storage medium are generally used. As a method for distributing a relatively large program at once, the latter method, in which the program is sold at a shop in a medium such as a CD-ROM or attached to a magazine, is widely used.
When a user obtained such a CD-ROM on which a program was recorded, the user referenced a piece of software (a menu), or a booklet-type guidebook, which had been prepared with the CD-ROM for making a selection, and the user selected and started a necessary program among a plurality of programs.
At this time, it was possible to duplicate all of the programs from the CD-ROM in a hard disk. However, in order to save a hard disk area, it was effective to start the programs from the CD-ROM. When this kind of operation was performed, since user data generated by the program could not be recorded onto the CD-ROM, it was necessary to register the user data only on the hard disk.
On the other hand, in order to promote software sales, it is conceivable to register a plurality of pieces of software (programs) in advance onto a rewritable medium such as an magnetic optical disk and sell them in this state. When software is unnecessary, the software may be deleted on the user side and the storage medium may be returned to an initial state, and the user may use the storage medium.
However, in the above method of operating the storage medium, in a case where, for example, the user wanted to choose any one of the software programs to try out, the other software programs which were not selected occupied an area on the storage medium. In a case where the user wanted to delete such unselected programs, it was difficult to know which file composed the unselected program, and there was a possibility that the file of the program selected for trial might also be deleted.
Further, there were many cases where data corresponding to such a program was stored in a hard disk drive on the computer side, and management of the program and the data was not easy.
The present invention has been made in light of such points, and has a technical object to raise selective operating effectiveness of the plurality of programs recorded on the storage medium.